Google G Suite Takes Business by Storm

Google Platform is Affordable and Practical for Busy Professionals

Google has finally come up with a catchy and appropriate name for its online platform of apps and Cloud storage. Google’s G Suite offers small business owners a dynamic collection of business-focused apps and Cloud space at very affordable prices. In fact, depending on your usage requirements, businesses can take advantage of G Suite for as little as $5-10 per month, per user.

G Suite comes equipped with all the apps business owners need, including Gmail, Google Drive, Google Docs, Google Hangouts, Google Slides, Google Sheets and Google Calendar. While the apps are the same ones individual Google users have been using for years, their design and implementation in G Suite make them smarter, more intuitive and more business-focused than ever.

Lay of the Land: Getting to Know the Basic Benefits of G Suite

G Suite is designed specifically to help business leaders work smarter, not harder. G Suite operates as a company’s central hub, where all aspects of a company’s business are easily accessible and optimized for the modern business landscape. Let’s explore some of the key areas that G Suite helps business owners optimize:

Communication & Connection

G Suite is jam-packed with apps to help businesses communicate and connect with clients and colleagues. Gmail and Inbox serve as powerful and customizable email hubs that centralize key communications and business tasks.

Additionally, the Google Calendar offers integration and syncing capabilities to optimize client and team meetings.

Furthermore, apps like Hangouts, Groups, and Google+ help businesses better organize their communication processes and form more meaningful and strategic connections with associates.

Collaboration & Productivity

With a collection of apps that rivals Office 365 packages, team collaboration and productivity are optimized forcefully in G Suite. Docs and Sheets – Google’s answer to Word and Excel – offer the ability for real-time collaboration of business documents using an online browser.

Slides, Google’s version of PowerPoint, offers the same collaboration capacity and a unique collection of stylish and well-organized presentation templates to help business presentations make a stronger impact.

The Sites and Forms apps help business owners optimize web presence. The Sites app offers a unique platform where team members can collaborate to build engaging websites. The Forms app allows businesses to create unique and business-focused surveys, registration forms and help request forms, with built-in tools for response analysis.

Storage & Access

G Suite makes data access, storage and sharing more streamlined than ever. On the baseline plan, the Google Drive app offers business owners 30GB of Cloud storage – more than double the space available on the free Google Drive app.

Even better, the Business Plan, for companies with more than 5 employees, offers unlimited Cloud storage and an improved admin control panel as well as access to the Vault app for email archiving. These dynamic Cloud storage options will make it easier than ever for employees to access, store and share data as needed – from anywhere, anytime.

In addition to these baseline apps, G Suite also offers a variety of other dynamic features including:

Business email addresses for all employees,

Video and voice calling capabilities,

Reliable security and administration controls,

24/7 phone and email support,

Advanced search capabilities,

File import/export tools,

Auditing tools for business insights and more, depending on your service level.

Futuristic Focus: How G Suite is Using Machine Learning to Make Business Run Smoother

Google has made a serious effort to implement strategic machine learning tools, directly into G Suite. The machine learning mechanisms can analyze a company’s actions within all the connected suite apps and begin to drive optimization in the background.

Google VP of Apps and Google Cloud, Prabhakar Raghavan, explains that the goal of the machine learning strategies is to make G Suite function as a part of the team for businesses in any industry. G Suite is designed specifically to help streamline the repetitive machine-like tasks that eat up valuable business hours.

Here are some of the leading machine learning tools that will be implemented in the newly-branded G Suite:

Quicker Access

Searching for files as they’re needed can be time-consuming using traditional systems. However, with machine learning strategies in place, the Google Drive app is more intuitive than ever and will recognize more quickly what you’re looking for and bring recent or commonly used files to the forefront.

A Smart Calendar

Machine learning tools have been implemented into the Calendar app for some time. The smarter Calendar app is designed to streamline the organization of regular business meetings by automatically letting you know when team members are available or offering directions to common business meeting locations.

Data Management and Analysis

The whole point of Spreadsheets is to help businesses better analyze and understand trends based on data. Machine learning in Google Sheets works to understand business files and automatically creates charts to track and report data trends.

Google Docs with a Virtual Team Member

Machine learning in Google Docs is really like having a virtual team member to collaborate with. Using the Explore function on the Docs app, businesses owners can check out search topics and websites that will add substance and credibility to the document at hand.

Presentation Formatting

The most annoying part of preparing any business presentation is ensuring that everything is formatted correctly to look outstanding on screen. Formatting can often take a huge chunk of time, but machine learning tools in Slides offers automatic format capabilities. Even better? The Slides app has the same Explore function as Docs, making it easier than ever to add relevant web content to your slides.

Choosing a G Suite Service Plan: Finding the Right Service Package for Your Business

In true Google fashion, G Suite service package subscription has been kept simple and straightforward. Businesses are only given three options to choose from, all of which are affordable and allow companies to customize their G Suite experience to meet their unique business needs.

Business owners have the option of choosing between three service tiers:

BASIC

G Suite: $5 per user, per month.

BUSINESS ß BEST VALUE FOR SMALL BUSINESS

G Suite Business: $10 per user, per month

ENTERPRISE

G Suite Enterprise: $25 per user, per month.

All versions support HD video conferencing via Hangouts and round the clock customer support is available via email and phone. However, some features will vary based on your service package. You can compare features here.

It’s also important to note that there are specific versions of G Suite created for Government and Education institutions, titled G Suite for Government and G Suite for Education respectively. These specialized versions offer unique features to help these industries better manage operational challenges.

Google has also kept the set-up process for G Suite as easy and quick as possible. It only takes a few seconds to sign up for G Suite and once a business account is created, the users will be redirected to the G Suite Admin Console. There, business administrators can make key considerations for users, company profiles, billing, reports, app & device management, security, and support.

Inviting employees to join the company G Suite can be done in one of two ways: manually adding team members or importing a CSV file containing user details. Then, administrators can set controls for which team members have access to which apps and features. Finally, administrators always have the option of disabling unused apps from the G Suite altogether.

Optimizing your G Suite: Considerations for Managing and Making the Most of Your G Suite Account

Once you’ve got your G Suite set up, it’s important to understand some final key factors that will help your company manage and make the most out of G Suite’s optimizing power. Check out the leading G Suite optimization features below:

Mobile Device Management

G Suite provides users with a designated Mobile Device Management section, which lets administrators mark passwords as mandatory and enable Google Sync on user devices to keep all team members up to date. You can also select devices individually by setting up a manual approval process and remotely wipe old employee devices.

The Admin Console

The Admin Console is G Suite’s pilot cabin. It offers a variety of extra tools that enable group creation, third-party app management, and domain management. It also provides connection to free Google services such as Google Analytics, AdWords, Google+ and Google App Engine.

The Vault

The Vault feature is limited to the Business and Enterprise plans and is suitable for companies who like to store email, chat, and files in adherence to government and regulatory compliance. Data retention policies can be set up to cover all employees or according to particular dates, groups or search terms. G Suite offers automatic and easy-to-use search, analysis and reporting tools as well.

File Sharing

File sharing in G Suite can be done seamlessly, with a click on the “Share” button, which has options to share with the public, anyone with the unique link, anyone within the company, or only with a specific set of people.

Apart from widely used Microsoft Office document formats, G Suite apps also support various other formats including Open Document Format, Rich Text Format, PDF, plain text and zipped HTML. Additionally, Google Sheets lets you save spreadsheets in CSV and tab-separated value formats, and presentations can be downloaded in SVG and PNG formats.

Security

Google has deployed custom-built servers and network infrastructure directly into G Suite. This infrastructure maintains a standardized environment and continuously monitors it to detect any changes or threats. Even better? User data in G Suite travels over the internet and among data centers via end-to-end encryption

G Suite offers a variety of other dynamic security features for administrators including strategic spam filters, 2-factor authentication controls and the capability to implement customized Data Loss Prevention policies.

No matter your reasons for considering G Suite, it’s clear to see that the optimized business hub offers benefits for companies across all industries. Depending on the size and unique demands of your business, making the switch to G Suite can offer huge streamlining and optimization power.

However, like with any business decision, it’s critical to be informed. In a modern business world, an organization’s digital headquarters is what makes a business move, so make sure you know exactly what’s required for deploying any final solutions.

If you’re thinking about deploying G Suite as your company’s digital hub, you should make sure the deployment is customized and strategic. If you have specific questions about certain aspects of G Suite and how to best optimize the platform for your business, don’t be afraid to reach to a local technology firm for a consultation.